The venue, the Halifax Metro Centre - a/k/a the "MC" - is an indoor multi-purpose sports arena that is also used for concerts. It opened in 1978, and is located in downtown Halifax, at the foot of Citadel Hill.
Seating capacity for concerts is up to 13, 000.
Leonard Cohen last played in Halifax in 2008.

Leonard Cohen back in Halifax on April 13
January 9, 2013 - 1:13pm
By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter

Leonard Cohen is making good on the promise of his song Coming Back to You and returning to Halifax this spring.

On Saturday, April 13, Canada’s esteemed poet of song plays in Nova Scotia for the first time since a string of sold-out shows at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in 2008. This time around he’s performing a single night at the Halifax Metro Centre, one of four East Coast shows on the second leg of his Old Ideas World Tour.

Tickets for the concert go on sale on Friday, Jan. 18 at 10 a.m., along with shows at Harbour Station in Saint John on April 15, Moncton Coliseum on April 17 and Mile One Centre in St. John’s on April 20. Ticket price and availability details have not been released yet, but fans are advised to keep tabs on the tour page of Cohen’s website, http://www.leonardcohen.com and the Halifax Metro Centre box office site, http://www.ticketatlantic.com.

The 78-year-old Montreal-born singer-songwriter is currently touring following the release of 2012’s Old Ideas, his first new studio recording since Dear Heather in 2004. Receiving widespread acclaim, the album was featured on several end-of-year best-of lists, making it to No. 13 on Rolling Stone’s top 50 records of 2012, and a best album of the year nod from Uncut Magazine.

So - I'm walking up Spring Garden Road and decide to go to the Halifax Folk Music Centre on Brunswick Street. I walk in and the owner is pointing at guitars, ouds, bandurrias, etc. and speaking with this handsome older man. Another worker comes over and says to me "can I help you". I simply reply, "has he played anything yet?". The clerk looks at me and answers "No", moreso as if to say, "Why?". I said do you know who that is? "No", he replied. "Just Wait", I said.

Soon the man said "that one, and that one" and took off his jacket. He tuned the first guitar and began playing. The clerk then asked me who is that? "Javier Mas, from Barcelona", I told him. After listening for about 5 minutes I quietly shouted "Who By Fire". Javier looked at me, smiled and asked "are you a musician?", he asked. "No", I said, not wanting to go there with him. He was very friendly and speaks wonderful English.

After another 10 minutes of listening I felt it best to go. "Senor Mas, adios", I said - "Si, hasta manana", he replied, obviously understanding why we are both in Halifax today. This is getting off to a good start.

@DonMillsCRA - Leonard Cohen one of the coolest guys in world even in his seventies. A real inspiration.
Leonard Cohen, Canadian icon, at the Metro Ctr still fantastic after all these years. Will we see him ever again in Halifax? Sure hope so.

@ChatRenard - "I hope this isn't a farewell tour. Not to be morbid, but we are all sort of on a farewell tour." - Leonard Cohen

Tonight's show was masterful. Cohen is one of my literary heroes and it was an extreme honour to share a room with him this evening and so many people who love music, who love poetry and true artistry. I am overwhelmed and so soothed in my spirit from it all. Leonard Cohen is an artist in the truest sense of the word. It was a pleasure to take it in.

REVIEW: Cohen lifts Halifax to Tower of Song
April 14, 2013 - 6:42am By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment ReporterFrom vintage ballads to taste of mortality, Coolest Canadian Alive enthralls
Leonard Cohen opens his show on the stage of the Metro Centre on Saturday night in Halifax. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff)

With a spring in his step, the Coolest Canadian Alive skipped onto the stage of the Halifax Metro Centre, and within seconds he was kneeling at the altar of romance.

Leonard Cohen bowed down before acoustic guitarist Javier Mas, plucking the nylon strings like a Barcelona balladeer on Dance Me to the End of Love, setting the tone for a show designed to reach through the heart and grasp at the soul.

“I hope this isn’t a farewell tour,” deadpanned the 78-year-old poet of song. “Not to be morbid, but in a sense, we’re all on a farewell tour.”

There aren’t many 78-year-olds that can pack the Metro Centre, and while I’m sure many in attendance missed the intimacy of his multi-night stand at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium nearly five years ago, Cohen did his best to make up for it with his focused performance, crystal clear sound and wry banter.

“Thank you for your very warm welcome when we came onto the stage, we deeply appreciate it,” he said, referring to the standing ovation that greeted his arrival onstage, before gesturing up to the nosebleed seats.

“Thank you for climbing to those heights.”

Cohen had his own heights to scale as well, with Sherpas in the form of his finely tuned six-piece band and the spirit-soothing backup vocals of longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters.

It turned out to be a heckuva climb, nearly 30 songs high, with tunes slightly tweaked to suit the extra wrinkles in the singer’s familiar growl. Bird on a Wire is transformed into a Stax-style soul ballad, driven by Neil Larsen’s vintage Hammond B3, while the pointed wisdom of Everybody Knows remains relatively untouched in its arrangement.

But then there’s the masterful restructuring of Who By Fire, starting with Mas on the laud, a kind of a pear-shaped baritone 12-string.

The Spaniard played with rich gypsy intrigue before Cohen underlined his litany of mortal coil leaving with the imaginative interplay between band leader Roscoe Beck’s elastic double bass, Larsen’s burbling B3 and Mexico City percussionist Rafael Gayol’s well-timed thumps.

The song proved to be a perfect lead-in to the Montreal bard’s thoughts about mortality on the Old Ideas Tour, named after his latest acclaimed release.

“There is one hazard in my hotel room; it’s in the bathroom, and it’s the magnifying mirror. If you’re over the age of 11, you’re best not to look into it,” grinned Cohen, who noted this mirror on the wall had a voice that wasn’t prepared to do his bidding.

“Lighten up, Cohen. How long are you going to pout? What increments must be changed in the cosmos to adjust the intensity of your struggle?”

Cohen didn’t have an answer, responding instead with a pair of new tunes from Old Ideas, Amen and Come Healing, ballads for those in search of spiritual repair, soaked in gospel hope manifested by the perfect harmonies of Robinson and the Webbs and Alexandru Bublitchi’s spectal, soaring violin.

Cohen is perfectly capable of lightening up, though, swaying seductively to Beck’s old-school disco rhythm for First We Take Manhattan and adopting a jaunty country beat for Heart With no Companion.

Of course, he was a country fan in his earliest days, later acknowledging his debt to Hank Williams in the second set opener Tower of Song, where he earned cheers of agreement from the crowd when he purred, “I was born with the gift of a golden voice.”

Unfortunately, press time loomed just as Cohen passed the halfway point, using that golden voice to deliver his first signature tune, Suzanne, with a pure arrangement tinged with melancholy and nostalgia for a perfect moment, captured in the amber of memory.

Now this show would be the same, the notes lingering in the air in our minds, after a magical night presided over by a master of song with few equals. He has built a mighty tower, but unlike Babel, his will stand for years to come.